In the nineteenth century people of Welsh origin in North America subscribed to continental, rather than national, newspapers. There was a short-lived Welsh paper in British Columbia in the nineteenth century, but most Canadian ventures floundered for lack of a mass readership. Typical was the Welsh Pioneer (Winnipeg, 1910–11). The oldest and most popular Welsh newspaper read in Canada is Y Drych (The Mirror; New York, 1851– ). Begun by John Morgan Jones, it was published in Welsh until 1941 and served as one of the principal means by which Welsh immigrants in North America kept in touch with one another and with events in Britain. It was also an influential force in encouraging migration both from Wales and from the United States to Canada, especially to the prairies (Alberta’s Wood River settlement in particular). Today it is published in English with an occasional article in Welsh and a page devoted to improving Welsh-language skills. It transmits news from the many Welsh societies in North America and reports on community activities both on this continent and in Wales itself. More recently, another U.S.-based Welsh newspaper has become popular among Welsh Canadians. Ninnau (We Also; New York, 1975– ) was established by a Welsh couple who had immigrated to the United States in 1960 from the Welsh settlement in Patagonia, Argentina. The paper is not exclusively Welsh in its focus; it also includes material on Celtic themes in general.
Newspapers, notwithstanding their great value in sustaining ethnic identity, cannot substitute for the face-to-face contact provided by community organizations. The three most popular cultural institutions brought by the Welsh to Canada are Cymdeithas Dewi Sant (St David’s Society), eisteddfodau, and Cymanfaoedd Ganu (communal hymn singing).
Most Canadian cities and large towns have or have had a St David’s Society, which organizes social activities throughout the year that culminate in a banquet on St David’s Day and a children’s party at Christmas. Unaffiliated to any church, the St David’s societies bring together all people of Welsh extraction to arrange cultural exchanges between Canada and Wales, social outings, and visits from the homeland of sport teams, choirs, and speakers. The eisteddfodau, a legacy of the late-eighteenth-century revival of Welsh culture, evolved in Wales into a national festival for literary and musical competition. Bilingual eisteddfodau were popular in Canada at the turn of the century, but, because of the decline of the Welsh language, interest in them has declined recently.
By contrast, the tradition of Cymanfaoedd Ganu is still flourishing. In Wales, the religious-singing festivals known as Gymanfaoedd – featuring an oratorio as well as a selection of old and new hymns – were long held by individual chapels. Larger versions of the Gymanfa are organized in North America by the National Gymanfa Ganu Association (NGGA). The first NGGA Gymanfa was held in 1929 at the First Presbyterian Church, Goat Island, Niagara Falls, and attracted over 2,400 people from Rochester, Buffalo, Niagara Falls, Hamilton, Toronto, and London. These cities and their surrounding regions have remained the core areas of support for the festivals. The NGGA Gymanfa has been held in Canada several times, for example, in Toronto in 1959 (attracting 3,200 people), 1967, and 1973 and in Victoria in 1990 and 1991.
By the late 1970s the emergence of other forms of entertainment and increasing intermarriage resulted in many previously vibrant Welsh societies losing support, particularly among those with young families. To halt this trend, and also to attract the NGGA to Toronto, the Ontario Gymanfa Ganu Association was organized in 1957. It held its first festival in Niagara Falls in April 1961 and in subsequent years it has visited many of the larger centres of the province.
A typical Gymanfa Ganu is held over a weekend and includes a Noson Lawen (a night of entertainment and folk dancing) as well as a meeting, a Awr y Plant (an hour-long session for children designed to teach them Welsh music, poetry, and literature), and a formal banquet and dance. All these activities culminate with the Gymanfa Ganu itself, which usually is presided over by a preacher and a musical director from Wales. Both in Canada and in the United States, the Gymanfa Ganu is one of the most vibrant and visible cultural manifestations of the Welsh presence, analogous to the Royal National Eisteddfodau in Wales.
Welsh musicians have had a significant impact on Canada. Edmonton’s musical life, for example, owes much to the inspiration of William John Hendra, a stonemason and viola-player who immigrated to the city in 1906 and soon immersed himself into its musical life, including among his many achievements the creation of the Edmonton Welsh Male Chorus. Another choir, the Wales-based Welsh Imperial Singers, directed by R.F. Davies, gave thousands of concerts in almost 600 towns and cities throughout North America between 1926 and 1939. In the 1920s especially, these concerts strengthened the ethnic identity of many Welsh Canadians and led to an increase in the membership of Welsh societies.
Today, one of Canada’s most prominent choral groups is the Canadian Orpheus Male Choir of Hamilton, Ontario, founded by the Welsh-born musical conductor Lyn Harry in 1977. The predominance of Welsh music in its repertoire has made the Orpheus a showcase for Celtic talent and culture in Canada. Similar choral societies exist in Vancouver, Ottawa, Montreal, and London, Ontario; the latter’s Cantorion Cymraeg Canada (Canadian Welsh Singers) made a successful tour of Wales in 1995. Several Welsh societies initiate musical exchanges with “sister” choirs in Wales who tour Canada and appear at such events as the Ontario Welsh Festival, a week-long celebration of Welsh culture that began in 1962 and is usually held on a university campus.
Apart from the St David’s societies, Welsh social groups exist in most large urban centres and many smaller communities. The most significant are in Toronto, Montreal, Ottawa, London, Hamilton, Winnipeg, Edmonton, Calgary, and Vancouver. The newest is in Charlottetown. It was started in 1991 and now has forty-five members, fifteen of whom were born in Wales. They meet once a month for singing, reading, and learning more about the Welsh-Canadian heritage. Such societies are the backbone of Welsh community life in Canada and help to generate interest when a large cultural festival or visiting choir or soloist from Wales is being hosted. In many communities Welsh culture and language are taught in association with the local Welsh Society.
Several of the Welsh have contributed to Canadian cultural and intellectual life more generally. Three Welsh-born Canadians stand out in the world of Canadian academe: the mycologist Stanley John Hughes, the oceanographer George Lawson Pickard, and the philosopher George Sidney Brett. In painting, prominent Welsh-Canadian artists are Robert Harris, best known for his painting “The Fathers of Confederation”; Edmund Montague Morris, who specialized in Amerindian portraits; and Walter Phillips, who became famous in the period 1910–20 for his landscapes of the Rocky Mountains.
In literature, two names tower over the rest: the poet Charles George Douglas Roberts and Robertson Davies, who, prior to his death in 1996, gained international renown for the Deptford Trilogy (1970–75), The Rebel Angels (1981) and many other novels. While Welsh themes per se are generally absent from Davies’s works, the poetry of the Welsh-born Beryl Baigent is inspired to a large degree by her native homeland. Whether writing about male-female relationships or Celtic mysticism, Baigent shows herself to be deeply influenced by memories of her Welsh childhood. One work in particular, Hiraeth: In Search of Celtic Origins (1994), captures the mood of many Welsh Canadians who seek to preserve their heritage.
Rugby football is the leading sport in Wales and rugby talent has been exported to many countries, including Canada. Gareth Rees, whose parents emigrated from Wales, is currently captain of the Canadian national team. More representative are the myriad of unsung Welsh-Canadian sports coaches and organizers at the community level. Typical is George Jones of Brantford, who, after immigrating to Canada in 1948, started a rugby club in Brantford, Ontario, “to express his Welshness.” This led to the establishment in 1950 of the six-team Ontario Rugby Union, an annual St David’s Day Dinner, and the Brantford and District Welsh Club, which has branches in Hamilton, Cambridge, and Brantford. The 1969 matches between the Brantford Harlequins and the clubs of the West Wales Rugby Union were the first of many such Canadian-Welsh rugby events. These matches have been essential in popularizing rugby in Canadian high schools, and the results were evident when Canada beat Wales in an international championship game in Cardiff in 1993.
Welsh language, literature, and history figure as part of broader Celtic studies courses and programs in Canadian universities, including St Michael’s College of the University of Toronto and the University of Ottawa. There are also a number of educational organizations that seek to stimulate Welsh ethnic consciousness. For example, the Cymdeithas Madog (North American Welsh Studies Association), founded in 1983, holds an annual summer school that offers language classes, folk singing, noson lawen, and an eisteddfod. An average of 60 to 100 people attend the summer school, which has been held in recent years at Carleton University, Ottawa (1993), and in Baltimore, Maryland (1994). A similar event is Welsh Heritage Week, held in July each year in a different location and sponsored by the Cymdeithas Gymreig y Delyn, Gogledd America (The Welsh Harp Society of North America), the British Council, and the National Welsh-American Foundation.
